David Welsh

71 Added | 5 Magazines | 19 Likes | 1 Following | 3 Followers | @davidtwelsh | Keep up with David Welsh on Flipboard, a place to see the stories, photos, and updates that matter to you. Flipboard creates a personalized magazine full of everything, from world news to life’s great moments. Download Flipboard for free and search for “David Welsh”

Unlike climate change, where some insist that there is no scientific agreement that comes as the result of literally 100 years of observation, there is growing, if grudging, agreement that income and wealth inequality is a problem. On the business front, we’ve gone from the Economist wondering if …

Up to 93 million cows and counting—find out how our reliance on industrial feedlots is affecting the environment.<p>They provide us with beef and milk, the gel coating for pills, soap, ice cream, baseballs, and printing ink. But our dependence on cattle, especially the beef we consume in larger …

Last week the US secretary of state launched a savage attack on climate sceptics, fuelling a toxic political debate<p>For Naomi Oreskes, professor of scientific history at Harvard, there’s no more vivid illustration of the bitter war between science and politics than Florida’s ban on state employees …

When journalist Chai Jing released her documentary on China’s air pollution, she probably could not have dreamed that her message would resonate so widely while boosting the share prices of so many “environmentally friendly” companies.<p>On Monday, more than a dozen stocks in the fields of pollutant …

The old adage “if the service is free, then you are its product” needs updating. What it signified was that web services (like Facebook, Google, Yahoo et al) that do not charge users make their money by harvesting personal and behavioural data relating to those users and selling that data to …

Artwork: Hubert Blanz, Four Elevators, 060, 2006, black-and-white baryta print on aluminum, 80 x 199 cm<p>Boeing’s launch of the 787 was marred by massive cost overruns and battery fires. Any product can have technical problems, but the striking thing about the 787’s is that they stemmed from exactly …

Texas has proposed re-writing school text books to incorporate passages denying the existence of climate change and promoting the discredited views of an ultra-conservative think tank.<p>The proposed text books – which come up for public hearing at the Texas state board of education on Tuesday – were …

When a former client’s secretary was arrested for embezzlement years before his own crimes were uncovered, Bernie Madoff commented to his own secretary, “Well, you know what happens is, it starts out with you taking a little bit, maybe a few hundred, a few thousand. You get comfortable with that, …

Pictures of kittens with plates in their heads are shocking, but we need to approach decisions about animal research with as much objectivity as we can muster, writes Dr Obaro Evuarherhe<p>I once lost a debate with an animal rights activist. As a medical researcher who has been actively involved in …

If you're a scientist and you work for a pest control company, you're used to thinking about bugs as the enemy you're trained to kill.<p>Now try putting one in your mouth.<p>It took some mental rearranging for Nancy Troyano, an entomologist for Ehrlich Pest Control. But on Wednesday she did it for the …

A new paper by GWPF's Richard Tol accidentally confirms the results of last year's 97% global warming consensus study<p><i>“There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt</i> …

Don't kill the pig, say Dutch researchers—just grow its cells in the village meat factory.<p>Here's one vision of the future of meat: We manufacture it from stem cells in giant "bioreactors" of the sort you might find in a modern pharmaceutical factory. The cells come from a contented pig that lives …

When you think of what it takes to crank out the tens of millions of smartphones and tablets sold each year, images of crowded, disgusting worker dorms and grueling factory floor conditions probably come to mind.<p>We've all heard the stories. We've seen the photos.<p>That's not what Samsung's mobile …

As a wedding planner, Jeanne Hamilton saw her share of very bad manners — people who made her think, "There should be an etiquette hell for people like you."<p>And bingo! That was the beginning of her website, Etiquette Hell, a repository of more than 6,000 firsthand accounts of bad behavior people …

People under 65 who eat a lot of meat, eggs and dairy are four times as likely to die from cancer or diabetes, study suggests<p>A diet rich in meat, eggs, milk and cheese could be as harmful to health as smoking, according to a controversial study into the impact of protein consumption on …

The ability to think analytically is important for any manager today. The first steps, as I’ve explained before, involve collecting data, making some simple plots, drawing basic conclusions, and planning next steps. But data do not give up their secrets easily. While we can use data to understand …

Can you make mayonnaise without eggs or meat without killing? Tech firms and investors believe they can transform food the way Apple changed phones<p>We stood in an airy San Francisco warehouse, staring at two plastic cups of gleaming mayonnaise. A golden retriever snored lightly in a patch of …

A survey of the past year's papers demonstrates that the science is in on global warming.<p>The next time you hear someone dispute that human activity is destabilizing our climate, remember this pie chart.<p>It represents geochemist James Lawrence Powell's review of 2,258 peer-reviewed scientific …

Fifty years ago, the U.S. surgeon general first declared that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer. Popular Science readers could have known that was coming.<p>Fifty years ago tomorrow, then-U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry held a press conference announcing that, among other ills, smoking caused lung …

If your company is like most, it tries to drive high performance by dangling money in front of employees’ noses. To implement this concept, you sit down with your direct reports every once in a while, assess them on their performance, and give them ratings, which help determine their bonuses or …